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Authors: Jonas Hassen Khemiri
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bathroom door].
*
Twenty minutes later. Still no taxi. Or—an awful lot of taxis zoomed past us with their signs lit and picked up other customers further on. In the end we decided to go for
a solo wave. I went to stand near a shop window with my phone to my ear, Samuel stood alone on the sidewalk. A taxi stopped, Samuel opened the door and said where we were going and when the taxi
driver accepted, I pretended to end my call and jumped into the backseat. The driver saw me and swallowed and moved the passenger seat forward so I would have room for my legs. We drove south in
silence. Samuel was low on cash and I said it was fine.
“I’ll get it.”
“Thanks, I’ll get the next one,” he said, as usual, and clapped his hand to his wallet-slash-heart.
I shook my head to say it didn’t matter and I would never let money come between us. The taxi drove on. We dropped Samuel off in Hornstull and continued toward Örnsberg. When we
turned off Hägerstensvägen I leaned forward and showed my cash to the driver.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I have money. I’m not going to rob you.”
The driver gave a nervous smile, he tried to hold the wheel a bit more loosely but I noticed how relieved he was when I unfolded my body from his backseat and the car recovered its usual center
of gravity.
*
Panther calms down and comes back. She says that later that same day, at four or five in the afternoon, a stranger called from Samuel’s phone. He said that there had been
an accident, he said that it probably wasn’t that serious, he had worked in Cambodia and had seen things that were considerably worse. But I called Vandad anyway, I told him what had happened
and I thought that if it was serious someone would contact me. When I didn’t hear anything I assumed that everything was fine. I went out that night, a few drinks at Möbel-Olfe and then
a party in a courtyard near Görlitzer Bahnhof.
*
Okay. I realize we don’t have “all the time in the world.” And of course I can “fast-forward to Laide and Samuel’s next encounter.” As long
as you agree that everything I’ve told you up to now plays an important role in what happens later on. The rest of the year flies by. Panther moves to Berlin to concentrate on her career in
art. Samuel and I go from being acquaintances to being friends to moving in together. By day he works at the Migration Board and I stack moving boxes in fifteen-footers. On the weekends we do all
those things Samuel gets it into his head we have to do so as not to miss out on life. And I tag along; I never say no. Even if there are times when his ideas make me want to shake my head and ask
why. Why take an airport bus to Arlanda and back to watch planes landing and eat dinner at a buffet place that according to Samuel’s cousin is “every pilot’s best-kept
secret”? Why swing by the shooting range in Årsta to check out the recoil in a Glock? Why buy a used Sega Genesis online to see if NBA Jam is still as fun as it was when we were little?
I don’t know. Samuel doesn’t either. But we do it all anyway and we share everything equally and if one of us is low on cash the other one pays and when Samuel finds out that his sublet
won’t be renewed the obvious choice is for him to move in with me. I help him with the move, get him free boxes from work and borrow a cargo van. He takes the living room, I keep the bedroom.
Once Samuel says that he’s never had a friendship that was so “wonderfully undemanding” and I’m not a hundred percent sure what he means but I nod and agree.
Sometimes when I walk into the bathroom in the morning and see his toothbrush beside mine I think that we have grown awfully close in an awfully short amount of time. That this closeness
is— Delete that. Delete all of that. Just write that the rest of the year is like a stroboscopic slideshow of rumbling basslines, clinking glasses, nods at people we don’t know but
recognize, sticky dance floors,
*
Twenty minutes later. Still no taxi. Or—an awful lot of taxis zoomed past us with their signs lit and picked up other customers further on. In the end we decided to go for
a solo wave. I went to stand near a shop window with my phone to my ear, Samuel stood alone on the sidewalk. A taxi stopped, Samuel opened the door and said where we were going and when the taxi
driver accepted, I pretended to end my call and jumped into the backseat. The driver saw me and swallowed and moved the passenger seat forward so I would have room for my legs. We drove south in
silence. Samuel was low on cash and I said it was fine.
“I’ll get it.”
“Thanks, I’ll get the next one,” he said, as usual, and clapped his hand to his wallet-slash-heart.
I shook my head to say it didn’t matter and I would never let money come between us. The taxi drove on. We dropped Samuel off in Hornstull and continued toward Örnsberg. When we
turned off Hägerstensvägen I leaned forward and showed my cash to the driver.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I have money. I’m not going to rob you.”
The driver gave a nervous smile, he tried to hold the wheel a bit more loosely but I noticed how relieved he was when I unfolded my body from his backseat and the car recovered its usual center
of gravity.
*
Panther calms down and comes back. She says that later that same day, at four or five in the afternoon, a stranger called from Samuel’s phone. He said that there had been
an accident, he said that it probably wasn’t that serious, he had worked in Cambodia and had seen things that were considerably worse. But I called Vandad anyway, I told him what had happened
and I thought that if it was serious someone would contact me. When I didn’t hear anything I assumed that everything was fine. I went out that night, a few drinks at Möbel-Olfe and then
a party in a courtyard near Görlitzer Bahnhof.
*
Okay. I realize we don’t have “all the time in the world.” And of course I can “fast-forward to Laide and Samuel’s next encounter.” As long
as you agree that everything I’ve told you up to now plays an important role in what happens later on. The rest of the year flies by. Panther moves to Berlin to concentrate on her career in
art. Samuel and I go from being acquaintances to being friends to moving in together. By day he works at the Migration Board and I stack moving boxes in fifteen-footers. On the weekends we do all
those things Samuel gets it into his head we have to do so as not to miss out on life. And I tag along; I never say no. Even if there are times when his ideas make me want to shake my head and ask
why. Why take an airport bus to Arlanda and back to watch planes landing and eat dinner at a buffet place that according to Samuel’s cousin is “every pilot’s best-kept
secret”? Why swing by the shooting range in Årsta to check out the recoil in a Glock? Why buy a used Sega Genesis online to see if NBA Jam is still as fun as it was when we were little?
I don’t know. Samuel doesn’t either. But we do it all anyway and we share everything equally and if one of us is low on cash the other one pays and when Samuel finds out that his sublet
won’t be renewed the obvious choice is for him to move in with me. I help him with the move, get him free boxes from work and borrow a cargo van. He takes the living room, I keep the bedroom.
Once Samuel says that he’s never had a friendship that was so “wonderfully undemanding” and I’m not a hundred percent sure what he means but I nod and agree.
Sometimes when I walk into the bathroom in the morning and see his toothbrush beside mine I think that we have grown awfully close in an awfully short amount of time. That this closeness
is— Delete that. Delete all of that. Just write that the rest of the year is like a stroboscopic slideshow of rumbling basslines, clinking glasses, nods at people we don’t know but
recognize, sticky dance floors,
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